This is Sydney writer Brenton Booth’s second full-length poetry collection published by Epic Rites Press. The book was two years in the making and consists of fifty-seven poems and three short stories. The writing is highly accessible, of considerable underground cred and usually told from the point of view of Robert, a young aspiring writer.
In the interview which follows this review, Booth says candidly of his speaker, “I often write with the name Robert Blake. It is a name I came up with about 15 years ago. For a reader it is best not to get to caught-up with our similarities though. Some stuff is the same, but other stuff is far, far off. My writing is not autobiography. It is literary. I create poems or stories to achieve a certain effect or point.”
Robert’s name is only mentioned twice directly in the collection: in the poem “The Loser” and in the short story “Angel of Death”. Although the events described take place over a period many years, the voice of the speaker is remarkably consistent. “Robert” is a young man who lives alone in an apartment building in Sydney, Australia. He takes drugs, frequents bars and whorehouses, writes poetry and is constantly broke, moving from one dead end job to the next. He loves watching cage fighting, sometimes has suicidal thoughts, is an non-believer and has a strong affinity for the weak and bullied.
“From the Ashes” is a strong representative Booth poem which incorporates most of these narrative and thematic elements. The language is simple, matter-of-fact and largely understated:
FROM THE ASHES
I am at home on the second
day of a 2 day hangover
broke and worried I might
lose my job
my boss called earlier
asking where the hell I
have been the past few
days
thinking about the 1500
dollars I spent on a hooker
and all the years I have
spent alone-
pounding away at my
already beaten will
trying my best not to
give in:
to keep the hell away from
the kitchen drawer-
problem is I can’t think of
anyone that would miss
me
the hooker said she liked
me and would give me a
freebee next time she comes
to Sydney to work from
Newcastle:
it would definitely be nice
to see her again
but you can never tell with
them
I then get a message from
a girl I met 10 months
ago
I can’t believe it:
maybe there are gods,
I respond: would you like
to come over?
but already know the
first time in hours
how this night
will end.
(both poems in this review are posted with the permission of the poet)
Prostitutes feature predominately in many other poems in this collection. Whore poems include: “The Nicest Whore I Ever Met”, “Dream Lover”, “An Answer”, “The Young Beautiful Hooker” , “A Strange Whore” and the wonderfully named “A Poem For The Hooker That Took All My Cash And Gave Me An Infection”. The speaker Robert has a fascination with call girls. He enjoys the quick, hard sex but even more, the intimate banter he engages in afterwards- in a kind of weird parody of a relationship we see, for example, in Travis Bickle’s portrayal in Taxi Driver.
Asked why he features so many hookers and dysfunctional woman in his work, Booth replies, “One reason I write about hookers is because I haven’t really read anyone that writes honestly about them. You read all this ‘joy of sex’ crap written by young girls who aren’t hookers. I have talked to a lot of hookers, in great detail, and believe their stories should be told. They are silent voices in society. Like old men and women, junkies, nerds, outcasts, etc. And I like to give these people a voice through my work. I also believe everyone is dysfunctional. There are those that know it, and those that should know it. I hold the magnifying glass to mine, and everyone else’s faults.”
The stunning book’s jacket is designed by Robert Hansen of poems-for-all fame: https://poems-for-all.com Asked about Hansen’s participation in this project, Booth explained, “He used images from the 3 stories that finish the collection and give it its meaning. I liked the covers Robert Hansen did for John Yamrus’ “I Admit Nothing” and Matt Borczon’s “Battle Lines”. Robert had previously published a few poems of mine in his Poems-For-All mini book series and I was very happy with the results. I asked Wolfgang Carstens if it would be O.K with him if I asked Robert to do the cover and he gave me the green light. And thankfully Robert agreed to do the cover.”
The title of the book echoes Bukowski’s 1979 masterpiece Play The Piano Drunk Like A Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit. Asked about this similarity, Booth tells me, “ I actually came up with the title about 8 years ago drinking bourbon at a bar I was fired from 10 years earlier. It was the first time I had ever been back there. The title just popped into my head and I quickly wrote it down and never told it to anyone until I sent the manuscript to Wolfgang. You have to be careful with titles. I have about a dozen I have never told anyone that I will hopefully get to use one day. The thing about “Bash the Keys Until They Scream” is it worked perfectly for this collection, which spans my time as a young writer trying to find his literary voice and place in life, to an older writer getting regularly published and comfortable with who he is and where he has ended up. ‘The keys of course being a typewriter, not a piano.”
“Fish Tank” is another understated poem in the collection which uses the symbol of dead fish and an empty tank to strikingly represent the failure of the couple’s relationship:
FISH TANK
Just after we started
going out she bought
a fish tank and three
small fish
“I have been looking
at them for a while
in the pet shop, but
never bought them
because I have been
trying to save money;
but now you are with
me, I am so happy, I
don’t care about
money. I have given
them names: Gertrude,
Cecily, and Beatrice. I
want you to have
Beatrice. She is lovely
and beautiful like you,”
she said
I didn’t really want a
fish and changed the
subject
over the next few months
the fish died one by
one
until there was nothing
left but an empty
fish tank
and not long after
an empty apartment
and 3 small ghosts
far wiser
than me.
Innocence trampled by bullying, or parental neglect or by an encroaching evil adult world is a common concern in Booth’s work. The childhood reminiscences “Riding Skateboards In The Afternoon”, “Fighting In The Playground” and “Summertime” show the speaker Robert to be both picked on and a defender of the bullied. “Girl In A Box”, “Murder By Numbers”, “Fighting Years” and “Creek” offer further perspectives on the traumatic passage into adulthood.
For Booth’s persona Robert, the ultimate challenge is to defeat life’s daily miseries and to survive and to hopefully develop as a person. Pills help, women help, whiskey helps, but what keeps Robert grounded and away from the “knives in the kitchen drawer”, is the hope what writing may bring to his life.
In “the Artists” the speaker remarks that the poem is “as important as breath”. The meta-poem “For Lost Friends” concludes: “this poem was/ written for all of those/ that couldn’t" find hope “to want to live/ another day”. In the powerful poem “Confession” the speaker relates a transformative anecdote about how a mate gave his book to a friend who threatened “to kill himself”. After reading the book over and over again, the guy is saved, for now. He says to Robert, “I thought my/ life was terrible/ That I was the/ only one. Then/ I read your poems./ And realised I/ wasn’t the only/ one. Thank you.”
Booth says of the palliative nature of his writing, for himself and others, “I originally started writing because I was moved by the plays of Anton Chekhov. They really got me out of a bad personal jam. And I think about that a lot when I write: the potential to really affect the life of another through your work.”
The three short stories at the end of the collection add a different dimension to Booth’s writing. The best of the three is “The Last Fight” about a declining cage fighter Billy ‘Beat Down’ Henderson who is asked to throw a fight in New York City for an up and coming darling of the mob who run the industry. Events start to lose their grip as the crowd sense an upset.
Bash the Keys Until They Scream is a grim but credible howl from a determined young Australian writer. Booth lived in King’s Cross, Sydney’s red-light district for twelve years and in his personal life certainly knows about walking the plank, with the “burning ground underneath”. As Booth matures as a writer, he is continuing to learn how to kickbox his way out of the straight-jacket of Bukowski inspired writing, which over the last couple of decades has cloned far too many insipid clowns.
INTERVIEW WITH BRENTON BOOTH 18 FEBRUARY 2019
Brenton, congratulations on your latest book “Bash the Keys Until They Scream”. Can you briefly describe the process of writing, assembling, preparing for submission and publication that your latest book entailed?
The publisher, Wolfgang Carstens, gave me a lot of freedom with this book. He originally asked me for a “selected works”. I told him I would love to put together a collection of poems and stories with the same free, innovative, uncompromising spirit of Miller’s “Black Springs,” and Bukowski’s “Love Is A Dog From Hell”. He thought it was a great idea. It took us nearly 2 years, a lot of headaches and confusion, lots of living and writing. But I am happy with the results.
I really dig the cover! Can you explain Robert Hansen of Poems-For-All involvement in the project?
I really like what he did with the cover as well. He used images from the 3 stories that finish the collection and give it its meaning. I liked the covers Robert Hansen did for John Yamrus’ “I Admit Nothing” and Matt Borczon’s “Battle Lines”. Robert had previously published a few poems of mine in his Poems-For-All mini book series and I was very happy with the results. I asked Wolfgang Carstens if it would be O.K with him if I asked Robert to do the cover and he gave me the green light. And thankfully Robert agreed to do the cover. He later confessed to me that reading the book cured an artistic block he was experiencing: it was so powerful to him.
The title of your book is strikingly similar to Bukowski’s “Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Bleed A Bit”. Was this an intended tribute to the man or for other motives?
I am not sure why. I like the Bukowski title. I like most of his titles. Catfish McDaris once said to me: “I write titles like him and Bukowski.” I agreed with that. Our titles are mostly “action” titles: rarely a simple word or casual phrase. I actually came up with the title about 8 years ago drinking bourbon at a bar I was fired from 10 years earlier. It was the first time I had ever been back there. The title just popped into my head and I quickly wrote it down and never told it to anyone until I sent the manuscript to Wolfgang. You have to be careful with titles. I have about a dozen I have never told anyone that I will hopefully get to use one day. The thing about “Bash the Keys Until They Scream” is it worked perfectly for this collection, which spans my time as a young writer trying to find his literary voice and place in life, to an older writer getting regularly published and comfortable with who he is and where he has ended up. “The Keys” of course being a typewriter, not a piano.
In the book you present a consistent detailed portrait of the speaker who is known as Robert in the poem “The Loser” and short story “Angel of Death”. Is Robert the speaker of all the first person poems and stories and to what extent do you share similar traits and aspirations of the speaker?
I often write with the name Robert Blake. It is a name I came up with about 15 years ago. For a reader it is best not to get to caught-up with our similarities though. Some stuff is the same, but other stuff is far, far off. My writing is not autobiography. It is literary. I create poems or stories to achieve a certain effect or point. For instance “Angel of Death” never happened. I put a lot of time into that story. It is one of the few stories I wrote a scene map for before I started writing it. It is a story that will upset a lot of people. But they probably didn’t take the time to read the whole thing. And never got to its real meaning.
Why the preference for hooker and dysfunctional women in your poems?
One reason I write about hookers is because I haven’t really read anyone that writes honestly about them. You read all this “joy of sex” crap written by young girls who aren’t hookers. I have talked to a lot of hookers, in great detail, and believe their stories should be told. They are silent voices in society. Like old men and women, junkies, nerds, outcasts, etc. And I like to give these people a voice through my work. I also believe everyone is dysfunctional. There are those that know it, and those that should know it. I hold the magnifying glass to mine, and everyone else’s faults.
Moving onto your writing processes, do you have a set routine, for example, do you write everyday and do you usually extensive revise your work?
I think about writing all day. No matter what I am doing. I am always thinking about what is going on inside me, and around me, and if I could turn that into a poem or story. Some stuff comes in one go without any revisions. Other stuff comes quickly but takes weeks, sometimes years to get right. Other stuff has taken several years to write. I recently wrote a poem about Tennessee Williams relationship with his mentally ill sister that took 14 years. A few poems have taken similar times to that.
Do you have a specific reader in mind when you write?
I don't write for any particular reader type. I simply write the best I can. About as many subjects and different points of view as I can. And hopefully reach as wide an audience as possible. And if my work somehow moves them or brings some laughter, hope or reprieve- I have achieved what I have set out to do. I originally started writing because I was moved by the plays of Anton Chekhov. They really got me out of a bad personal jam. And I think about that a lot when I write: the potential to really affect the life of another through your work. I therefore take writing very seriously. And always try to go as far as possible with every piece I do.
What is the overall importance of poetry in your life?
Writing is my life.
It took many years before your writing was finally accepted for publication. What advice would you give to a young writer thinking about getting published in the small alternative press for the first time?
I started writing when I was 19 and didn't send anyone until I was 23. At the time I was still learning but had a lot to say and the occasional strong poem would come out. I didn't get published until I was 33. I originally only sent to The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and all the bigger publications. I got close a few times, but never published. It was frustrating. But I knew the reason I wrote was not to get published, sure it would be nice, but it wasn't the most important thing to me then: and still isn't. The most important thing to me as a writer is writing as good as I possibly can. And when I do that is the real success. And if you look at writing this way, you will live your work, it will be the most important thing, and rejections won't do too much damage. A question I regularly ask myself is: would I show this piece to my favourite dead writer? If the answer is yes, you are exactly where you need to be. And you should send your stuff to as many publications as possible. For as long as it takes to get accepted.
Any future plans? Any new books on the back burner?
Just write as much as possible. I have been writing a lot lately. No new books. I am really happy with this one. I don’t want to be a writer that releases books all the time. I’d prefer to put something together that took a long time to do and means a great deal to me. I did that with Bash the Keys Until They Scream. Thanks for the interview.
No worries! I really enjoyed the challenge!
For an earlier Bold Monkey interview with Brenton Booth check out this one on the release of his book Punching the Teeth From the Sky (2016): https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2016/06/book-review-interview-brenton-booth.html
